Why did Europe fail to manage the euro area crisis and what lessons can be drawn from this failure for Europe’s future? Studying the EU/IMF program that was imposed on Greece in May 2010 — the original sin of the crisis — highlights both the nature of the problem and the difficulty in resolving it. Professor Professor Orphanides, former governor of the Central Bank of Cyprus from 2007 to 2012, argues that the problem can be traced to the flawed political structure of the euro area that permitted governments of some member states to exploit problems in other member states and that undue influence of key euro area governments compromised the IMF’s role to the detriment of other member states and the euro area as a whole. For a copy of the paper, please write to Sofia Perez (perez@bu.edu).